


courage

by redredrobin



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Family, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Muslim Character, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8997652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redredrobin/pseuds/redredrobin
Summary: The last thing Simon Baz will be is afraid.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed. All errors are my own.

1.

Kids — they’re honest, which he looks back on with a wry fondness. Him, Sira, the others were all right because of _Aladdin_. Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine were places of enchantment, choked with magic carpets, camel caravans, and genies.

The world can go wrong in an instant.

A flying carpet can become a plane.

Sira comes home crying once, where their mother can’t see it, then Simon sets his jaw and never leaves her side in the bus, or the corridors, anywhere she has to be outside their home. They used to bring mac and cheese for lunch. They stop. The growth spurt hits, and people walk around him in the corridors.

Sira marries right out of high school. Simon moves nearby when Farid is born.

2.

'This is just routine Mr. Baz,' says the cop. Says the Fed. Say different voices, same tone. Always without apology. 'What are you afraid of?'

3.

Sira puts on a hijab, so Simon isn’t going to cower. The used bandage is folded on the sink. Simon turns his arm carefully. He clenches his hand into a fist, watching the letters shift on the skin. He wears short sleeves after it’s healed, so it’s always visible. At the counter of 7-11, in the driver’s seat, walking back to the house. He looks down at it, often, counting the letters. His father hates it, there's a shouting match as there will be every time he doesn't wear long sleeves. His mother disapproves only silently. No fear. No one will make him move.

The last thing Simon Baz will be is afraid.

4.

The van has a bomb. This cliche was probably waiting for some idiot to walk right into it.

He _had_ to be that idiot.

Simon just drives while the sirens swell behind him. The sick feeling in his stomach spreads — it’s too familiar.

This will be funny. Someday.

5.

The cell smells so strongly of urine when they put him in it that Simon holds his breath under the black bag. He exhales harshly half a minute later. The hours (minutes, days, he’s not sure) drag, broken only by footsteps. He has a lot of time to tremble, find resolve, and lose it. He lacks fear. This is the truth, the only truth that has never lost meaning.

He thinks about how nobody has listened to him say he’s innocent.

He thinks about what they might do, or what they like doing.

He thinks about reciting the shahadah, but shaheeds don’t die forgotten in places like this. The prison is for withering, and breaking. Sira is the only person who’d look for him, even now. She’d create a ruckus, and people would say that boy was going nowhere anyway. His mother would just — pray.

There’s enough time in this room to feel shame.

6.

**Searching for suitable ringbearer.**

**Ringbearer found.**

7.

Simon feels it there first, before the window gives way, and everything goes still. He’s choking on something — fear, he realises, a moment later. He was shaking as they held him. They're on the floor now.

Whatever it is, it’s small. Its power fills the room, giving off some weird light that reaches him through the bag. He holds his breath, steeling himself.

The world can go wrong in an instant.

**You have the — error — ability to overcome great fear.**

What?

**Simon Baz of Earth.**

This is not happening.

**You have the ability to overcome great fear.**

8.

His mother’s favourite word is patience. His mother’s favourite admonishment of him is _in Allah ma’ as-Sabireen_. Without sabar there is no peace, and without peace, no imaan.

Simon is not patient. Faithful is laughably far down the list: his mother has to shake him awake for Fajr until one day she mutters something about his account being his responsibility. Then, Sira’s the one pulling him out of bed.

It only takes a few mornings looking into the mirror to know the only constant is rage, enduring, stoked hot. His mother tries to temper it by herding him into the shower right after school, but the water rolls off him. It’s a sharp tongue and impulse that allows him to tolerate the rest of the world. It’s never patience that lets someone hold their head high. It’s not patience that’s going to keep them safe, or help them find some kind of equilibrium. There shouldn’t be one, because this world is wrong, and now they have Farid to think about.

Besides, Sira will be patient. He has faith in her, if he could choose one. He can have the rest of what they need.

9.

Simon puts on the ring. Or — honestly, the ring sticks to him, and he feels like his bones are humming, bursting with an unfathomable power. The whole world fills with light, the ring wrapping a protective costume around him. Green, black, a mask, because his arm is — glowing. The letters are bright against his skin.

_Remember, you wanted to be brave._

Shouting in the corridor. The door shudders. Everyone who was in the room is now unconscious.

 _God_.

His mother once said he who uses the words of Hadrat Yunus will never be denied, and Simon doesn’t remember the du’a, because he never learnt it. Faith and fear are the same — they're primal. Facing down something incomprehensible, you either shatter or call out.

 _Help me_.

10.

Faith and courage are the same. You don't need to understand it. You have a place for it in you or you don't.

Bismillahi ar-Rahman ar-Raheem.

 **Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps,** says the ring.

11.

Light engulfs the room, and there’s a dull roar as air rushes past him. The building gets smaller, and smaller, and the world fades. When he’s more focused on where they’re actually going, the ring bows to his will and takes him north, towards Michigan.

‘Simon?’ His sister’s shouting. This thing can make phone calls? Awesome. He had wanted to hear her voice. ‘What happened? What’s that noise? Where are you?’ Her voice turns icy. ‘ _Are you joyriding?_ ’

‘Sira?’

‘Yes, it’s me, you idiot!’

‘Sira, you’re not going to believe this!’

He’s flying. He won’t die in that awful place, and she’ll never have to wonder what happened to him.

‘Simon!’

The rest of her words are lost to the wind. ‘I’m okay!’ he yells. ‘I’m coming back, don’t worry!‘

12.

You can do impossible things with a power ring. Simon’s first construct is a car, his first _I can do that?_ is healing Nazir. It can keep off anything he doesn’t want near him.

It neither wants to or allows him to forget who he is. The tattoo on his arm blazes bright for the entire universe.

No fear.

13.

The gun is just something that happens.

There’ve been Green Lanterns on TV before, but Simon doesn’t remember seeing a brown one. Ring or not, it doesn’t matter. He’s spent a long time looking at fear, and the ring’s power isn’t infinite, or limitless.

The mask is telling enough — what if people found him? What would they do, given he’s just broken out of a maximum security facility? What about Sira, and his mother, or his nephew?

The world can go wrong in an instant.

He pockets it.

14.

His mother is the last member of the family to know. She looks at the costume like she’s not sure what she wants to believe.

She’s always believed. Simon could never find his way around that, like he doesn’t know how to stop feeling small under her gaze. And Jess is there, moral support, she calls it. Her nervous energy making his mouth twist. He’s a Lantern and he’s his mother's son, stubborn as she. It's hard to feel afraid _now_ , or walk towards it arms outstretched, to let it happen after a lifetime of saying no and staring it down.

Eventually, his mother says, ‘ _What_ are you wearing?’ and Simon reaches out to hug her.

15.

Shiin, Jiim, Ayn.

There is no place for fear here.


End file.
